Ulysses by J. Joyce

 

Ulysses, written by James Joyce, first came out in Paris in 1992 through the efforts of Sylvia Beach, the owner of the famous Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop. However, in England the novel was banned for obscenity until 1936.


Ulysses is one of the greatest examples of reworking of myth Odyssey in modernist literature.

Joyce uses the epic model to stress the lack of heroism, ideals, love and trust in the modern world: the epic structure becomes a a mirror in which the modern wasteland is reflected.

So, Joyce makes a parallelism between Homer's epic hero in the Odyssey and the events in the life of two ordinary people, Leopold Bloom and Sthephen Dedalus, in modern Dublin.

The plot

Ulysses tells the story of a day - June 16, 1904 - in the life of three characters:

• Leopold Bloom, a Dubliner of Jewish origin who works as an advertising agent;
• Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive young man with literature ambitions who feels frustrated by Irish provincial life;
• Molly Bloom, Leopold's wife, who is a sensuous and unfaithful woman.

Ulysses is embodied by Leopold Bloom, a Jewish everyman—shy, perhaps somewhat introverted, and eager for new experiences and human connections. By his side (in the figure of Penelope) is his wife Molly, a sensual and unfaithful opera singer. Bloom’s odyssey unfolds over the course of a single day in Dublin, from eight in the morning until two o’clock at night on June 16, 1904.

He is accompanied by the routine of daily life, each episode represented in the novel’s eighteen chapters, which symbolically correspond to those of Homer’s Odyssey: breakfast, a visit to the newspaper office where he works as an advertising agent, a stroll through the streets, stops at pubs, and even attendance at the funeral of his friend Patrick Dignam, a victim of alcohol. Each of these wanderings transforms into a journey of consciousness; after burying his friend, Bloom, wandering alone through the cemetery avenues, contemplates death.

Alternatively, prompted by the street advertisements, he reviews human desires. During his ramblings, Bloom encounters Stephen Dedalus, a young teacher, aspiring poet, idealist, and restless spirit. Both are unconsciously searching for something: Bloom for the son he has lost, Stephen for a father figure.

They first meet at the newspaper editorial office, then in the library. Finally, when Stephen is attacked while drunk in a rough neighborhood, Leopold—Ulysses—comes to the aid of this found Telemachus and, with an almost paternal affection, offers him shelter.

At Bloom’s home, the two spend the evening conversing until late at night. Molly lies in bed and, between wakefulness and sleep, takes stock of the day and her life. In a long interior monologue, she reflects on her experiences—from childhood to youth; on her relationships with men and her husband, whom she betrays despite loving him; on Stephen, whom she wishes to welcome again after having filled the house with flowers. Molly exhibits an exuberant vitality which, unlike Bloom and Stephen, enables her to embrace life. In the joyful memory of kisses received, she closes the novel.

Novel Structure

The novel is divided into eighteen episodes, each featuring a different narrative style and marked by strong linguistic experimentation. Here is a summary:

1. Stephen Dedalus (Telemachus). The story begins with Stephen Dedalus, a young teacher and aspiring writer, who contemplates philosophy, religion, and art as he wanders through the city.
2. Leopold Bloom (Ulysses). The narrative shifts to Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew working as an advertising agent. Bloom spends the day roaming Dublin, confronting inner thoughts, brief encounters, and the awareness of his wife Molly’s infidelity.
3. Molly Bloom (Penelope). The novel concludes with Molly Bloom’s famous interior monologue—a stream of consciousness devoid of punctuation—in which she reflects on her relationship with Bloom, on sex, love, and life.

Main Themes in the Novel

• Stream of Consciousness: A narrative style that follows characters’ thoughts in real time, often without punctuation or logical sequence.
• Alienation and Identity: Bloom is an outsider in his own land, while Dedalus seeks a place in the world.
• Sexuality and Desire: The novel was long censored for its content considered obscene.
• Modernism: Ulysses stands as one of the masterpieces of literary modernism, breaking away from the conventions of the traditional novel.

The stream of consciousness: Yes I said Yes I will Yes

To convey the life of an individual in a single day, and in absence of a dramatic plot, Joyce uses the "stream of consciousness" in order to show the chaotic flow of thoughts in the human mind. This technique consists of a difficult prose style which does away with syntactical and grammatical connectives and juxtaposes disparate and apparently incongruous images.

A majestical example of this technique is the monologue "Yes I said Yes I will Yes". This monologue belongs to the last episode of the novel, entitled Penelope. The main character Molly lies awake in bed thinking of her past and her present life.

In Molly's famous monologue the stream of consciousness technique is taken to its extreme: external events are not described and there is no third-person narrator to tell us what is happening.

There is no way out of this flux of thoughts, images, memories and fantasies, since at no point does Joyce choose to interrupt it. The technique is used to render from the inside Molly's sleepy sensuality while she is half thinking half dreaming of the day when she was proposed to by Bloom, together with her youth in Gibraltar, other kisses and other men.

Comparison between Ulysses and Odyssey

Ulysses has many similarities with Odyssey: the twenty-four hours of Bloom's day correspond to the twenty-four books of the classical epic, the eighteen episodes presented in the novel correspond to as many incidents in Homer.

Thus, in a variety of ways, the ancient epic is ironically played against the modern.

Here are few examples:

• in the first episode Telemachus, Stephen is evicted from his home by his housemates, who laughed him and deprived him of his rights, just as Ulysses' son Telemachus is forced to leave his home, where Penelope's suitors bully him;
• in the second episode Nestor, Stephen teaches a history class at a boys' school and gets some good advice from the schoolmaster, Mr Deasy, who is the counterpart of Nestor, the wise Greek king who gives Telemachus suggestions;
• in the third episode Hades, Leopold Bloom participates in a funeral at Dublin's cemetery and thinks about the dead people he has known. In the same way, Ulysses descended in Hell to speak with souls of great dead heroes;
• in the Circe episode, Bloom and Stephen meet at a brothel, a house of pleasure, owned by Bella Cohen, a grotesque version of the mythical Circe.

However, these novels have different goals and messages. While Odyssey represents man's journey through life, Ulysses stresses limitations and lack of heroism of characters. If Ulysses is exalted by Homer as a man who "has seen many cities of men", Leopold Bloom only knows Dublin and his expectations are limited.

Stephen Dedalus has only a brief unsatisfactory meeting with Bloom and, at the end, they go their separate ways.

Molly Bloom is different from Penelope: she has not slept with her husband since the death of their little son Rudy, and she has been unfaithful to him with her concert manager.